“Love is not patronizing and charity isn’t about pity, it is about love.
Charity and love are the same — with charity you give love, so don’t just give money but reach out your hand instead.”
― Mother Teresa
Someone stands in front of a camera, says a few words, and then has a bucket of icy cold water dumped on their head.
I’ll be honest. I hate videos and I resisted watching these for quite a while. Mostly because I couldn’t figure out WHY everyone was suddenly taking an “ice water shower” and posting it on Facebook. When I could no longer resist the temptation (those videos were showing up in my feed at an alarming rate) I watched one – and ended up pretty confused. WHY was everyone dumping water on their head?
I’m all for supporting a worthy cause. My problem? Not a single video I saw mentioned anything about the actual cause – the reason behind the cold water wash. After watching a few videos I turned to Google to figure out what illness was behind this challenge and learned it was ALS, which is more commonly known as Lou Gehrig’s disease. In case you don’t know (as I didn’t) Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), is a progressive neuro-degenerative disease that affects nerve cells in the brain and the spinal cord. The disease can quickly progress from slight muscle weakness to full on paralysis without any hope for recovery. It’s an awful disease that strikes people in the prime of their life.
So, I’m really torn on this one. In once sense, I’m all in because money is money – and a disease like this needs all the funding it can get. Heck, I’m even in for silly fun like dumping ice water on your head in the name of charity. And this silly fun challenge has raised BIG BUCKS in the past few weeks. But the lack of actual, legitimate information about ALS/Lou Gehrig’s really rubbed me the wrong way. Instead of emphasis being on the disease – it was focused on the “challenge” – and getting other people to participate. I believe that supporting a charity is a decision that should come from your heart, and this had a weird “peer pressure” vibe to it that turned me off. Apparently I wasn’t the only one. Suddenly articles sprouted up all over social media condemning the “ice bucket challenge” as “slacktivism” at its finest.
Then, I went out to dinner with a dear friend of mine – and found out that her brother had died from ALS several years ago. She was extremely touched by the entire “ice bucket challenge” and was really excited that people were raising money and contributing towards a cure for the disease. Talk about perspective! I made a decision to forgo the ice bucket challenge. Then I was educated by a survivor. I now realize supporting a worthwhile cause is NEVER in vain – even if it’s cloaked behind a stunt. In the end, raising funds while increasing awareness is the most important thing.
So – Karen Galvan – I want you to know that while I love you dearly – I will NOT be dumping a bucket of ice water on my head. I will, however, make a donation on behalf of my family in the loving memory of your brother AND I will do what I can to help spread the word about this illness.
My dear friend – the beautiful blonde up front – bringing me happiness and perspective. 🙂
Take a few minutes and read about this disease and what you can do to help!
In New Zealand the ice bucket challenge was for Cancer
Interesting. Did it happen recently or was it a while ago?
Kim – it came to my attention a month or so ago.
One good video was from a young man diagnosed with the disease and he is only in his 20’s! His grandmother and mother have/had it and he takes care of his mother and knows what he is facing and at 26 (if I remember right), he was already having symptoms in his hands. Made me realize the ice bucket challenge is simply a way, like Relay For Life, to bring awareness and financial help to ALS, so I no longer get annoyed by those videos. Hoping for a cure for this horrible disease in time to help this young man!
It does put it in perspective a bit – especially seeing how quickly the disease progresses and how awful it is.
Thank you, Kim, for your thoughtful post on the Ice Bucket Challenge. The husband of a colleague of mine has ALS, and it is through her that I first heard about the challenge. She told me that the ALS Society of Canada was originally hoping to raise $100,000, however, because of the challenge, was able to raise their goal to $1,000,000, and has been able to raise their goal, again, to $3,000,000! The challenge is raising money … and awareness … exponentially! Which is your point. It is a dreadful disease. Let’s hope that the stunt of having a bucket of ice water dumped over ones head, or the donation not to, will lead to a cure.
The amount raised is awesome and I’m so happy its exceeded expectation!
Hi Kim … Both our daughters took the challenge and, because of your post, made sure that they said “the ALS ice bucket challenge” and that they had also make a donation. Without your post, they probably wouldn’t have said anything about why they were having a bucket of ice water dumped over their heads!
Excellent! It does seem more people are mentioning ALS – at least in the more recent videos I’ve seen! 🙂
Hmm, interesting. While I agree that the challenge doesn’t do much to raise awareness about ALS specifically, I actually view it as a really creative way of bringing niceness, charity, and social connection into a modern context. I think the idea of using social networks to spread a small act of charity throughout your group of friends is a way of building social capital. This from someone who deleted her facebook account years ago – it takes a lot to make me say anything kind about that site.
Appreciate the different perspective. I think social media has lots of pluses – and a big one is the ability to quickly connect people to bring about change and take action. My gripe was with the lack of knowledge surrounding it – without context it was just a bunch of people pouring water on their heads – once I understood a little better it helped me shift my focus. 🙂
I have loved this campaign from the beginning. First, I have a friend (my old boss) that has been living with the disease for a remarkably long time and has his own foundation dedicated to finding a cure.
https://www.facebook.com/MattWhiteCureALS Second, I love pratfalls and silliness even if it isn’t with a good cause in mind.
Anyway, I heard on NPR that the ALS association has raised more than $94 million dollars as of today. All these donations (kind acts), some small, some not have added up to something huge. Can more money, more research “buy” the cure? I sure hope so… (and I guess time will tell)
http://www.npr.org/blogs/health/2014/08/27/343733139/life-after-ice-buckets-als-group-faces-94-million-challenge
I donated and did the challenge, thrilled at the attention this awful disease is getting from all of this, I think the challenge had brought lots of attention to ALS. My uncle Eddie died from ALS in 1990.